What’s This About the US Being Attacked?

Too often people on both sides of the current war issues seem to be talking past each other. I think that happens a lot when we don’t take time to define our terms.

For example, ought we to be at war because we were “attacked” as a nation on 9/11/01? Maybe the answer depends a lot on what we mean by being “attacked”. First, I wish to agree that people with intent to harm interests of the United States deliberately flew planes into buildings on American soil and killed many people who did not deserve to be killed. After that position of agreement, I don’t know if there is yet common ground as I see it.

No specific country organized itself around an attack on America and no specific country told its surrogates, “Yes, we want you to do this on our behalf as well as for any reasons you have of your own.” As I understand it, an attack on a country occurs when another country or combination of countries attacks that country to take it over or to weaken it so the attacker can gain some of its resources or territory. For purposes of this discussion, I am not including military actions taken in self-defense.

The Taliban, for example, tolerated the existence of Al Qaeda for various reasons. They had a similar fundamentalist viewpoint about the practice of Islam, Osama bin Laden had a fair amount of money to spread around, and possibly the Taliban were somewhat naive about eventual events and outcomes of allowing Al Qaeda free rein. Prior to 9/11 the Taliban courted and had been courted by certain American business interests including George Bush who entertained some of their representatives at his Texas ranch. It appears they did not think tolerating bin Laden would create major problems with the US, and they did not share the Al Qaeda interest in setting up a sharia based empire in the greater Middle East. The Taliban certainly did not plan a head on attack on the United States. The Taliban were focused on building and maintaining a theocracy in Afghanistan alone.

What other country, then could have attacked? Sometimes other countries such as Iran or Iraq or Syria fanned the flames of discord between the Palestinians and Israel, to some extent with good cause since the Palestinians are the underdogs in that conflict. These behaviors have irritated United States’ leaders at times, but by and large these countries siding with Palestine often played it safe in recent years and did not go very far in offending the US and certainly had no plans to take down the United States as a country. It is another matter entirely that they may have wished, along with many European countries as well, to redirect some US policies via various diplomatic and other international pressures.

As for Al Qaeda itself, and not really a country at that, it has been stated by various counter-terrorism experts, that they, too, were not intent on conquering or defeating the US. They wanted to damage some key aspects of US power such as the military (e.g. the Pentagon) and a financial center (e.g. the World Trade Center). These actions were intended, rather, to give the US second thoughts about maintaining a military presence in Saudi Arabia and about some of its various policies in the Arab world. Damaging significant US properties was also intended to motivate other Arab nationalists to stand up to the US and work harder toward a fundamentalist, sharia based, Islamic Caliphate in the greater Arab world.

In my view, it doesn’t matter a whole lot what the ultimate goals and beliefs were. After all in this country, we tolerate those of our citizens who also believe in having a theocratic state and who believe in rules that were set down centuries ago whether they are widely recognized as humane today or not. Additionally our country recognizes that many people around the world have nationalistic ambitions. What matters is that many individuals banded together and committed a heinous crime, much as Timothy McVeigh did. In a way, both groups had a similar motive: they wanted to deliver a “message”. A message tinged, perhaps, with revenge.

The practical, ordinary and frequently effective response to a crime is for police operations to spring into action both to discover and apprehend the perpetrator(s). Many times international criminals have been apprehended in that way. We even have a mechanism, Interpol, set up to accomplish aspects of this work. Experienced people who have not been caught up in wishful ideological thinking have long advocated this approach to 9/11. A little belatedly, maybe, but nonetheless to the point, the conservative think tank The Rand Corporation has recently stated its research shows that you do not, repeat do not, effectively round up and disable terrorist criminals by attacking whole countries. They state the effective antidote is international cooperation in police actions. Meanwhile Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom have been pursuing, arresting, and taking to court a number of terrorists related to attacks in their countries and abroad. The United States, on the other hand, has even refused to cooperate with them in some of these cases.

Thus I do not personally perceive that I or my country has been attacked at all any more than I do when a someone walks into an office building or church or home and kills several people I believe a terrible crime has been committed that has implications for us all, and that it is the obligation of all US citizens to encourage the punishment of this crime and the prevention of future similar ones. People who wanted to target the US government and the US economy to achieve goals of their own that I do not like did not attack me personally or even my whole country. They did make all of us slightly less safe and that calls for action. If a man in the next county is murdered in cold blood and the perpetrator is at large I don’t take the attack personally, but I sure don’t want myself or anyone to be the next victim. Consequently I support local law enforcement agencies and the criminal courts. In this country, however, we would not go after the man’s whole family, only the man who did the crime.

I do not agree that my country as a whole has been attacked on a scale that involves all out war, and I do not believe that another nation of people is any more repsonsible for this crime than any of us is responsble for mistakes our government has made in the world. If our government uses our tax dollars in an unethical way, we may have a responsibility to speak out in protest but we do not deserve to die for that as so many ordinary citizens have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. And in the case of Iraqis, their government didn’t even have an indirect involvement in 9/11 so our own aggressive attack and take over of their country is even more horrifying.

Those who have follwed this analysis of 9/11 based on it being a criminal matter may question why we should be wasting so much of our human, military, financial, and moral capital on attacking whole countries when lives and money could be saved by pursuing an effective police action. Surely we have the American know how to do this, and if we don’t, it may be time to select leaders who will harness these capabilities.

For those who still believe our country was attacked and that some other country needs to pay for this, I would suggest that the debate begin with their making the case in the face of indications to the contrary. I don’t think we can have effective debates about solutions until each side has clarified terms. We may still disagree then about solutions, but we will at least know how to honestly and clearly frame the debate. Hopefully we will also find some points of agreement along the way.

Linda Muralidharan

18 Responses

“What other country, then could have attacked? Sometimes other countries such as Iran or Iraq or Syria fanned the flames of discord between the Palestinians and Israel, to some extent with good cause since the Palestinians are the underdogs in that conflict. These behaviors have irritated United States’ leaders at times, but by and large these countries siding with Palestine often played it safe in recent years and did not go very far in offending the US and certainly had no plans to take down the United States as a country. It is another matter entirely that they may have wished, along with many European countries as well, to redirect some US policies via various diplomatic and other international pressures.

As for Al Qaeda itself, and not really a country at that, it has been stated by various counter-terrorism experts, that they, too, were not intent on conquering or defeating the US. They wanted to damage some key aspects of US power such as the military (e.g. the Pentagon) and a financial center (e.g. the World Trade Center). These actions were intended, rather, to give the US second thoughts about maintaining a military presence in Saudi Arabia and about some of its various policies in the Arab world. Damaging significant US properties was also intended to motivate other Arab nationalists to stand up to the US and work harder toward a fundamentalist, sharia based, Islamic Caliphate in the greater Arab world.”

This is exactly why moderates such as myself resoundingly reject the flawed logic employed by yourself and others who think like you. Israel is the only democratic government in the Middle East. Not only do they treat their women with dignity and give them full legal and civil rights, including the right to defend their country by serving in the military, but they have women in the highest positions of leadership in the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Contrast this with the autocratic, barbaric, retrograde, woman-hating and demeaning terrorist groups who advance the Palestinian agenda.

You are also hopelessly naive. Like Hitler in “Mein Kampf”, Al-Qaeda has made its objective very clear and has repeatedly bragged publicly about its intention to conquer all “infidel nations”, kill or enslave their people and to force all of humanity on earth, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to be under the yoke of “the Caliphate”. Please read “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright, a balanced, exhaustively researched, unbiased and fact-based narrative history of the events that led to 9/11 and their roots, as well as our own government’s incompetence and bureaucratic in-fighting under both Presidents Clinton and Bush.

I am strongly opposed to George W. Bush and nearly all his policies, but I can rest assured that misguided, yet harmful far left idealists such as yourself and your anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-dignity, anti-Western biases will be absent from either an Obama or a McCain Administration.

“I do not agree that my country as a whole has been attacked on a scale that involves all out war”

Then you are stupid and should probably watch videos of commerical airliners slamming into commerical buildings and perhaps watch as people decided to jump 100+ stories to their death instead of getting burned alive.

I am ashamed the Times Union even gives the code pink kooks a voice. This is embarrassing.

Re #1 – I was right on the verge of saying something about lipstick and a pig before I caught myself… 🙂

I’m not sure what defines a moderate, but I’m hearing the same tired old historical abbreviations (if not distortions) that are the mantra of the far right. One thing that’s missing is an important aspect of Wright’s book: the historical context of the radicalization of individuals who have wound up associated with Al Qaeda (or the Taliban, or any similar group).

What the peacemakers are saying is that apart from the immorality of unprovoked attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan (and now being extended to Pakistan in the name of achieving our national goals), war simply isn’t working. Like it or not, we have been corrct on a number of really, really important points:

There were no WMD’s
There was no connection to Al Qaeda
The wars are increasing, not decreasing terrorism
The wars are both cause and symptom of many of the forces destroying our economy

Re #2 By what means if not logic do you arrive at the conclusion that because many in the peace community know that the wars we launched had nothing to do with 9/11, that we do not feel the tragedy of that day? Unlike the right, which seems to want to continue counterproductive wars, we see ways to reduce terrorism in the world.

I missed the article about Code Pink in which (I assume) the TU gave space to that organiztion.

Michael, I am finally getting back to you after a busy several days. One of the purposes of these blogs is to encourage dialogue among people of differing veiws on some topics. I am also glad to see that you and I do agree on at least a few things.

I appreciate your referencing the Lawrence Wright book, which I have not read in its entirety. I did look up some of his views and some of his dialogue with another author who wrote about Osama bin Laden in his own book. I may stand corrected that bin Laden has extended some of his purification rhetoric to peoples beyond the Middle East. It was not entirely clear from what I did read how the differing factions described within Al Qaeda have waxed and waned in influence regarding the strategies and ideologies of the organization. Wright did explain that the efforts to convert or exterminate all who are not true Muslims has fallen most heavily on other Muslims as few of the world’s millions of Muslims fit the narrow definition of a “true Muslim” and as we have seen many of the terrorist attacks of Al Qaeda (or their sympathizers) have killed large numbers of fellow Muslims. We have a lot of rhetoric from our pulpits as well, about end times, divine punishment of people in places like New Orleans, but such rhetoric by itself does not directly translate into a specific set of actions. Thus bin Laden may have been rallying his followers with his most extreme statements while picking his strategic goals in a more limited fashion. He certainly has been known to emphasize that he wants the US out of Muslim countries, especially the Arab countries, as he wanted the Soviets out of the region.

Wright also took pains to say that Al Qaeda is really a weak organization despite its occasional ability to wreak sophisticated havoc.

We still come back to the conclusion that effective means for reducing Al Qaeda sponsored violence is best done for both practical and humane reasons by police actions rather than by full scale war of one country toward another. Even if you still feel you were personally attacked, as an American, by the mass murders in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, that does not mean that the response needs to be irrational. Your own feelings are one thing, a careful analysis of the solutions is another.

I was glad to see that Wright covers the issue of FBI Agent John O’Neill who did his best to alert US leaders of the danger represented by Al Qaeda only to be ignored because of personal infighting among his colleagues. Then insult was added to injury when he himself was killed in the World Trade Center.

I agree with you that both the Clinton and the Bush administrations mishandled both Iraq and Al Qaeda. I only ask that you recognize that your criticism of your government does not mean you are anti-American any more than my critizing policies and acts of Israel mean I am anti-Semitic. Nor are the Israelis who have a similar viewpoint to mine anti-Semitc. Nor are the Palestinians who have disagreed with many actions taken by Palestinian leaders over the years anti-Palestinian.

Linda, read ALL of Wright’s book. Bin Laden’s doctrine makes it very clear that “jihad” is a world-wide endeavor and, as you correctly observe, via “takfir”, many Muslims are defined by these extremists as “heretics”, thereby justifying indiscriminate acts of mass murder which include the deaths of practicing Muslims. There is no room for compromise in bin Ladenism. To make peace, both sides have to be willing to work out agreements.

I eschew labels as much as you, but read an article in Larry Bradley’s e-zine (Bradley is the author of “Neither Liberal Nor Conservative Be”, and I identified with his description of the “restless, anxious moderate” (“RAM”) who disbelieves the rhetoric of both extremes and seeks a third, more rational way in American politics.

Of course, the roots of al Qaeda were in the radicalization of the oppressed, but who are the leaders? Men of great wealth and privilege: doctors, lawyers, engineers, intellectuals of all types, who were brought up with all the advantages, including, in many cases, a Western education. They convince the masses to become human bombs, a barbaric and inexcuseable practice.

As far as the Israel-bashing is concerned, look at the people you share your ideals with. Criticism of the policies or actions of a government is one thing, but making monstrous moral equivalency arguments and calling for the destruction of a democratic nation and a people who faced extermination in every century of history is way over the edge. I am acquainted with enough people in and around the activist community to know that much of the far Left, in college campuses, the pulpit, and carrying signs in the street, seeks nothing less than the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state and its absorption into a Greater Palestine with a far right Arab ruling elite. I have family members living in Israel. The majority of her people long for peace. Seems like the majority of the other nations in the region long for revenge and extermination.

Care to point out where I stated you do not feel the tragedy of that day? I never stated that once.

You seek to reduce terrorism in the world, how? The wars have now been successfull, Afghanistan has decimated the Al Qaeda terrorist network and Iraq has turned the whole Sunni world against Al Qaeda, nevermind a dictator who sponsored terrorim is now gone. You worry about appeasement, I want people in charge who worry about stopping the next terrorist attack.

As for Code Pink, you people are one in the same. Get out of your world of theory and please join us in reality.

Re #6 – I’m not aware that I said that you said anything. Although I don’t always succeed, I try not to put words in others’ mouths but say what I think or believe.

Reality? One thing that I notice is usually missing from the attacks (more on us than our ideas) is facts. For example, in your sentence about how the wars have been successful, there is no evidence I’m aware of that any of this is true. In fact, in a recent BBC interview, an Indonesian counter-terrorism expert talked about how the US policy has made his work far more difficult. This is one example. I’d be interested in seeing your opinions backed by fact.

Nowhere has any blogger recommended appeasement. I truly cannot understand why someone would attribute false statements to us and then argue with those statements.

“We still come back to the conclusion that effective means for reducing Al Qaeda sponsored violence is best done for both practical and humane reasons by police actions rather than by full scale war of one country toward another. Even if you still feel you were personally attacked, as an American, by the mass murders in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, that does not mean that the response needs to be irrational. Your own feelings are one thing, a careful analysis of the solutions is another.”

I don’t even know where to begin regarding this statement…

Almost 3,000 people – whose sole “crime” was to simply go to work that fateful September day – were killed as the direct result of a well coordinated terrorist attack many years in the planning. See, we’ve been at war with sponsored radical jihadists for centuries, but we’ve been too blind to see it and instead looked the other way.

A careful and rational response would have been to wage complete and total war (World War II style) against a number of nations en masse. In fact, the British and Australians fully expected the US to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in the mountains of Afghanistan and made provisions for such. Yet, we did not, and our response was relatively measured in comparison. As someone who has actually be “in country,” I know first hand that our response came as a welcomed surprise by many Afghanis.

All of us WISH that only simple “police actions” would be sufficient. Let’s all hug and sing songs together! Unfortunately, such a viewpoint – however well intentioned – is naive.

“For example, ought we to be at war because we were “attacked” as a nation on 9/11/01? Maybe the answer depends a lot on what we mean by being “attacked”. First, I wish to agree that people with intent to harm interests of the United States deliberately flew planes into buildings on American soil and killed many people who did not deserve to be killed. After that position of agreement, I don’t know if there is yet common ground as I see it.”

Then you need to get a new pair of glasses! Of course we were attacked! Perhaps you missed it on TV that day?????

Michael, Along the line of labels, I made a comment to an acquaintance the other day that doesn’t fit with what “some” liberals apparently preach or promote. The acqaintance responded that I better be careful, I seemed to be turning “purple”. Maybe I was purple and not blue all along or maybe labels don’t just fit. I love the comment made years ago by an acquaintance who said, “People are generic. They don’t need labels.”

The Al Qaeda philosophy has many roots, causes, and permutations. It is part of a movement of fundamentalists some of whom are present in many Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Yes, their views tend to be rigid and anathema to my way of thinking. However people change. There are some who have left the movement as some have left more homegrown radical movements. There are many books and testimonials from people who have left the extreme Mormon polygamist sects, the White Supramcist groups, Jehovhah’s witnesses. Some people have written books about moving away from the more extreme positions of the born again denominations. People like Yasir Arafat and Khadafy have changed their postions for various reasons, sometimes because they wanted the economic advantages of moving more to the center of things.

At this moment in time, the capture of Osama bin Laden would seem to be the desired strategy. However, world leaders need to keep open minds about any kind of suggestions that might appear regarding negotiations.

Still, that has not been the thrust of my argument to begin with. The point was that we had ways some of which would unfortunately include likely violence (domestic police forces often have to shoot to kill in pursuit of criminals here), to eliminate some of the terrorism without killing so many more people in the process. Although yes, it is true, that negotiations with other countries in a position to work against terrorism are sometimes part of the mix.

Just before we attacked Afghanistan, the Taliban regime of that period was, in fact, negotiating with the Western nations. Again let us not lump all Muslim extremists in together. I believe they were close to deciding they could protect their regime and its need for world trade better if they could figure out a way to save face and turn in bin Laden. We could easily have given them another three or four weeks to see if that worked.

There is not space here to delve way into the Palestine issue. Briefly, though, I think there are a lot of people in many countries who want a solution for the problem that protects Israel as well as Palestinians. I think you will find if you pursue more study, that there are many moderate Palestinians and that the times when the extremist minority increases is when they feel the least hope of a peaceful solution. Many wrongs have been committed by some on both sides. I have been studying more of both viewpoints and the history from both viewpoints in recent years because I was raised to believe that the Palestinians were barbaric and the Israelis could do no wrong.

At Ground Zero, if you go back and read my original post, you will note I referenced the 9/11 attack as very real, as abhorrent, and as a terrible crime. The issue is whether it was an act of war committed by a country represented by millions of people, a country such as Iraq, or was it a crime done by some number of individuals representing no country but rather their own criminality and idiocy. Nearly the whole world saw it as a crime, perhaps even a crime against humanity.

Many besides myself have concluded that criminals need to be targeted by a laser, not by a bulldozer that crushes so many innocents along the way that new criminals arise in revenge or new supporters of the criminals appear where there were none. That would be a very good argument for not having attacked Afghanistan as a country. Iraq had nothing to do with any of this so it becomes a little strange to point out that we killed a lot of people there, more than were killed in New York City, but that led to more killing not less.

We don’t really know whether or not we are safer now. If we are it could be because we tightened up security in the US after having such a dysfunctional mess in the administrtion, the FBI, and the CIA pre 9/11 or because we have been chasing bin Laden so that he can’t regroup. And we could have chased him without attacking all of Afghanistan.

Skywarner, I wonder what your rationale is for the centuries of jihadists at war with “us”. I am not even sure who “us” is. I know that there were brutal times when European powers ruled in whole or part some of the Islamic countries, suppressed aspirations of the people, supported nasty puppet rulers, and exploited the resources of the country to the detriment of the citizens. Matters were often aggravated when the colonial powers pulled out and left poorly drawn national boundaries that showed little respect for the ethnic and national identities of the people living in those regions.

Sorry, I have no time at the moment to review the precise names, but the current fundamentalist, Islamist type movements are usually traced to two major Islamic thinkers of the mid twentieth century. If you want me to get back to you with their names I will. One of them at least, was well entertained in Washington because the misguided leaders were so intent on spreading capitalism unfettered that they preferred him and his ideas to the socialist aspirations of some of the Arab nationalists. Just as the same leaders could not detect that Russian expansionsim was the real issue not whether or not one country or another preferred some form of socialism. Unless of course you were an exploitative oil company that wanted more than your fair share of a foreign country’s wealth.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other of the jihadist offshoots, well funded by Saudi Arabian oil money, are the current sources of the concerns we must have about religious extremism that is a threat to Muslim populations world wide and to many other people as well. Women’s rights, individual rights, freedom of expression, all are suppressed where these groups get the upper hand. However, we are complicit as well. We like some of the dictators in countries that use the religios extremists to hold on to their power. We, as in the United States, often are instrumental in keeping these dictators in power. And our rights in this country are threatened by those Christian religious extremists who wish to establish a theocracy here. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and sometimes the use of the courts and the ballot box, but only rarely is it won by the gun.

Re# 8 – That a particular counter-terrorism expert says something doesn’t make it true, but neither does it make it false. The statement is another source of information to be looked into by checking sources.

And speaking of sources, your assertions aren’t new, but neither are they documented. Do you have any sources of facts?

It is true that the US has not had another foreign terrorist attack since 9/11, but nobody had to do it. We are doing it to ourselves. Al Qaeda is doing to us what we did to the USSR: pulling us into pointless and expensive military actions that are breaking the bank. We are now being goaded into attacking our former ally, Pakistan. Any of you folks notice that the economy is in big trouble?

Re #9 – On a practical level, since morality doesn’t seem to enter into this discussion: We aren’t winning the wars we are in. Military leaders in Afghanistan are begging for more soldiers, but there aren’t any. How on earth could we have taken on more countries!??!

Hey, Linda. re: comment #11: I know your friend was kidding, but what’s wrong with purple? We really are a purple nation. Politicins, the media and so-called “opinion leaders” have failed us by dividing and polarizing us, rather than focusing upon what we all have in common. This is an effective mechanism for rendering ordinary people powerless to effect change.

As far as the rest, I am giving up on the debate. I get the same sense that I have after 3 or 4 exchanges with a Bush Republican–they are so set in their thinking that further discussion is a waste of time. They will inevitably repeat the same talking points over and over again without broadening their perspective and trying to view the world through different eyes.

That being said, as someone who has actually BEEN in the operational theater (Afghanistan, 2001-2003, Iraq 2003 and 2007), I have seen first hand the evils inflicted in the name of radical Islam. Many of these evils have been in play since the 7th century and continue to this day. Make no mistake about this one simple fact: the DAY that followers of radical Islam obtain a nuclear weapon, it WILL be used against a US or European target. Then what do we do, call the UN? Enlist the San Francisco PD to engage in a police action? Please…

9/11 was not a crime. It was an attack against our infrastructure and our nation. It was an attack against you and me – my family and yours. Our nation’s response (in conjunction with NATO, let’s not forget…) was appropriate and surprisingly limited in scope. Did you know that recruiting stations were actually TURNING AWAY some candidates as there were TOO MANY of them in the days in weeks following 9/11? I didn’t think so…

Out of curiosity, do you feel that the US response to Pearl Harbor was just? Should we have freed the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps? Or, did the US overreact on that one, too?

You want to talk about morality? You’re welcome to do just that thanks to the freedoms given to you as an American. And the reason you have those freedoms are because others have been willing to sacrifice to defend those freedoms. These same freedoms are only available in three Middle Eastern nations today: Isreal, Afghanistan and Iraq. You may not appreciate your freedom, and that’s fine as you are free to do just that. However, there are many in the world today that do appreciate their freedoms and are actively working to mitigate the radical elements who seek both our destruction and their own.

Is the US innocent in all of this mess? Of course not! I’m not naive. But there is no other place on earth that I would rather call home.

Skywarner, yes, you and I and Anita and many of my friends are trying to get the answers right. And I, for one, keep studying and learning new perspectives all the time. I know for one thing that many people feel the same way about their own countries that you feel about yours. You would rather live here than anywhere else. The students at Central High think theirs is the best school. The ones at Northern High think theirs is. And, in fact, many countries are wonderful places to live if you are economically advantaged. Countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Switzerland, Denmark, India, France, are, like us, not perfect but places with many civil liberties. Thus I don’t really see the point about comparing the US with other places. We know that there are a great many places remaining in the world where there is no freedom from want, where ethnic minorities are discriminated against, where there is sectarian violence, where the press is not free, where women have few rights. Islam is not the sole source of suffering nor is the US the sole source of happiness.

I have heard before about people rushing to sign up for war right after 9/11. Some are sorry now, some aren’t. It is not, however, always safe to speak your mind here. Or to associate with certain groups and people no matter how innocent, peaceful, and well-intentioned the individual is. That said, we do have a great deal of freedom which is currently better improved in the courts than on the battlefield. It is also true that there are degrees of freedom in other Islamic countries. There is some, far from enough, in Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, and in some of the other countries in that general region. And if Islam is the main culprit why not consider Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey? Our freedoms have been hard won here at home, too, because there was much in our Christian tradition that has worked against women, minorities, people with socialist, agnostic, and Communist views. To name a few.

Other than the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, which wars were fought for freedom for Americans and not for the aggrandizement of the American economic empire? And was World War II justified? I don’t even know. I was taught to think so by the history books. My father said, “No, let the Russians and the Germans fight each other to oblivion, don’t fight Britain’s war for it.” I ignored his view. My thoughtful, well educated, affluent friend says, “No, Hitler was the seed of his own downfall. Before long his own people would have had a successful revolt and taken him out.” That’s something to at least think about.

But even the moral act of fighting for the Gypsies and Jews and others in the concentration camps (which was accidental and not the war’s goal) was not for our freedoms but a good gesture. If it were so important to our own well being why aren’t we fighting to save the people in Darfur? Why when we begged the Bush administration to do something for the Taliban oppression of women and others did Bush (and Clinton before) do absolutely nothing?

Nuclear non-proliferation was well on its way to being an effective antidote to proliferation. Bush has not pursued that path. If we resume, it will have a major effect on those nations who have a right to say, “Why can you do what you want but we can’t?” And, yes, nations are different from bin Laden (who is not capable of producing a bomb). Even Russia did not use the bomb even though their leaders were highly suspect when it came to human decency.

Right now in Pakistan the population is turning more and more against the fundamentalists because they do not accept their methods. We are in danger of messing up again because of our interference. If we leave the Pakistani people to stumble out of their own mess, they will exercise moderation in the short term and maybe work their way toward less correuption and more democracy in the long term. If we keep trying to call the shots, if we keep sending money for arms only, they will react out of nationalism and give in too easily to the extremists. You will notice how much better India has done because it is secular and because it refused to be the puppet of either the US or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

There is yearning for more freedom as well as a fair distribution of the wealth in countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, etc. We need to stop propping up their theocratic dictators, trust the process of change despite the struggles that almost all countries go through, the US, European countries, African countries, in going from feudalsim and colonialism to autonomy and a peaceful civil society.

And by the way, what is the latest in Iraq? Has the US occupation stopped shutting down news outlets and trade unions? And last I heard the women of Afghanistan were still being abused by the courts and social customs of Karzai’s Afghanistan.

The Us can make a difference in the lives of people in many countries. First, though, we need to ask them what they want and not be so quick to decide for them what is good for them.

“And was World War II justified? I don’t even know. I was taught to think so by the history books. My father said, “No, let the Russians and the Germans fight each other to oblivion, don’t fight Britain’s war for it.” I ignored his view. My thoughtful, well educated, affluent friend says, “No, Hitler was the seed of his own downfall. Before long his own people would have had a successful revolt and taken him out.” That’s something to at least think about.”

I’m sorry to say this, but this is a woefully uninformed opinion for an obviously intelligent person. Just read the history and the facts. Quite simply, you are wrong.

And I am not a Christian, so I don’t subscribe to your theory. Furthermore, my religious tradition has not “worked against” any of the groups you cite.

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